


The Ugly Cry

by InnerSpectrum



Series: February 2021 Johnlock Prompt Challenge [16]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, February 2021 Johnlock Prompt Challenge, Post-Season/Series 02, Tissue Warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:07:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29582112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnerSpectrum/pseuds/InnerSpectrum
Summary: It's two months after the jump, Mycroft comes to clean out Sherlock's room and a truth is revealed...
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Series: February 2021 Johnlock Prompt Challenge [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138172
Comments: 32
Kudos: 97
Collections: February 2021 Johnlock prompt challenge from ohlooktheresabee





	The Ugly Cry

**Author's Note:**

> February 2021 Johnlock Prompt Challenge from ohlooktheresabee. Prompt: Ugly

John Watson sat in the sitting room and stared at nothing.

The flat was quiet now.

The respectful noise from down the hall now was almost silent after a few of Mycroft’s minions had arrived and packed away Sherlock things finally. Two weeks after the funeral, when Mycroft had come by to give John the courtesy of letting him know they were coming the next day, he found the man an utter mess. Hair unkempt. Shirt buttons misaligned. Bare feet dirty. John’s eyes were hollow and red rimmed. His tear-stained face puffy as he roared against the intrusion. He had started to reach out and touch the man’s shoulder, but John simply looked at him. Mycroft took one look at the grieving man and relented.

Anthea, who still monitored the hidden cameras at Baker Street, informed him that the worst was not over yet for John Watson. That as bad as John looked, when Mycroft had left the flat that day; for all the former soldier has gone through, Watson had yet to ugly cry. Mycroft knows Anthea can look at things with a cold analytical eye, he has taught her well. Still, her deductions can be detracted with an emotional or sentiment tinged bent at times. He accused her of such with that assessment of John. She merely shrugged and said he’d know when it happened, then moved on to another subject. Mycroft knew he was right when John slowly returned to his surgery shifts within the next week.

Now nearly two months later Mycroft came by minutes after John’s shift. The doctor looked better than when Mycroft had last seen him in person. Oh, John was still a wreck, there was no doubt about that, but it was all on the inside now. He simply said to the man _Enough John, it’s time_.

John thanked him for not letting him come home one day to have found it all gone as he waved a hand in consent and headed for the kitchen. Though it was away under the sink, Mycroft could smell the fullness of the bin and its empty bottles. If John noticed Mycroft’s glance at the sink door, he said nothing as he opened the refrigerator and took out a beer.

Mycroft knew there was only one thing he could possibly say to John Watson that would ease his pain: that Sherlock was in fact alive. Unfortunately, it was the one thing he had vowed to his brother he would not do no matter how much he disagreed with Sherlock about it. Instead, he called down to the men waiting and it began.

He sat in the kitchen as his people packed. They were leaving all the furniture in the bedroom, but everything else in it was going into storage in the guise of cleaning out. No matter how large the stack of boxes grew, he knew it would never be enough to contain the intangibles of such a larger-than-life man as his brother. Mycroft longed for the day they could bring it all back.

He would have preferred to sit in Sherlock’s chair, it was more comfortable and better for his back, but that would have meant facing John as he drank his beers. As it was, John stared at the empty black leather and metal chair as though if he stared long enough, he could conjure his brother’s lean form into the seat. It was hard to watch the man silently grieve.

The packing was nearly done. Most of the boxes were already loaded into an unmarked van downstairs. Only a few more minutes and he could go. A beckoning from a minion caught his eye and Mycroft was almost glad for the distraction as he went into his brother’s bedroom.

He was handed an artist’s portfolio. He could not help the small smile that touched a corner of his mouth as he held it. Mycroft had not seen this in years. A remnant from when Sherlock took an art class for a case and liked it enough that he finished the course on his own once the case was over. Sherlock was a decent artist. A few of his unsigned sketches were framed in their parent’s home. He had not seen any of his brother’s sketch work for a couple of years. He had presumed Sherlock preferred his music more as an artistic outlet and let the sketching go. From the weight of the portfolio, he was wrong.

He glanced around the bedroom now devoid of nearly everything that was _Sherlock_ , sat on the bed and opened it.

He understood then why this was brought to his attention. These should not be shoved in a storage box and forgotten.

There were the expected black and white and color sketches of the immediate family at various ages. He knows Sherlock will be annoyed, but there was one of their parents that Mycroft absolutely must give them. There were a couple of Redbeard which made Mycroft grimace as he passed them quickly. There were quite a few of Greg, Molly, Mrs. Hudson and to Mycroft’s amusement one of Anderson and Donovan. Their faces were in black and white with red and white concentric circles sketched over them. Though the paper itself was not marred in any way, it did appear as though it had in fact been used as a dart board. 

There was even one of _The Woman_ drawn from memory as she stood in the door where he had first lain eyes on her in person. At least Mycroft hoped it was from memory. They had not spoken about it, but he knew Sherlock was aware Mycroft had eventually learned of her miraculous rescue. It had indeed taken Sherlock Holmes to fool him. The sketch had been made and then tightly balled up as if to be binned. Apparently, Sherlock had changed his mind and decided to keep it.

None were posed portraits. He surely would have known, especially those of Molly. He will gift her one, it was the very least he could do for the doctor who hid one hell of a spine under her mousy demeanor. Those sketches were all dated from over a couple of years ago.

And then there were all the rest…

_Oh Brother Mine!_

Dozens of sketches of John Watson. Some in color, some black and white. Some in pastel pencils, some pen, most were done in charcoal.

Mycroft barely acknowledged when the last minion informed him that they were leaving, as he looked through each drawing.

Sherlock had spared himself, nor John, any mercy in these sketches.

John softly smiling. John frowning. John, with a black eye, laughing. John with that dangerous half-smile glare that made Mycroft blink. Anyone who thought John soft would never think that again seeing that image. Some of John asleep on the sofa in the sitting room. Some outside on London's streets. One clearly at a very vivid crime scene.

Close-up details of an eye here, his lips there. There were random focuses on the doctor’s strong hands, studies of his bare feet. A couple of the star-burst scar on John’s left shoulder.

Like the portraits of the others, Mycroft knew John Watson had not posed for any. These were all from Sherlock’s memory or from his heart.

Every stroke that touched the paper was a caress of love. The grayscale portraits seemed more intimate and well-suited to both the artist and his subject. It especially showed in the portrait Mycroft held in his hand.

Mycroft found his eyes tracing along the sketched form of a mostly nude John. The folds of the drawn sheet technically provided privacy, but the subtle chiaroscuro of light and dark cheekily hinted at everything unseen. So focused was he on the man, Mycroft was momentarily taken aback to notice the other details. Sherlock had not drawn John in the upstairs bedroom, where the man actually slept, but where he would have preferred John to be, here in this bedroom.

_My god Sherlock! You should have told him!_

Mycroft knew his brother was madly in love with John Watson. He jumped off that damned roof to save John’s life. Sherlock is risking his own life now, so John can live his.

And John must never know.

“What is this?”

Mycroft, so enraptured by his brother’s art, had forgotten about John until the paper was taken from his hand. It took everything Mycroft had not to snatch it back in fear of ripping it.

John’s eyes went wildly over the art, darted over the many, many images of himself as he approached the bed.

“Mycroft...?”

There was no possible way Mycroft could sweep them all back into the portfolio and shield John from the brutal truth of them, so he moved aside and let John see.

John tenderly looked at everything Mycroft had seen and then focused on the few that were left.

And the more John focused, the more unfocused he became.

It especially showed in the portrait John held in his hands now.

It was an almost life-sized drawing of John’s face. His smile exuding love and happiness as his left hand gently encircles the wrist of the left hand that caresses his jaw. A hand that Mycroft knows is Sherlock’s. Two left hands drawn in such a way to naturally display the wedding rings worn.

Thus, Mycroft Holmes was witness to when John Watson learned the beautiful ugly truth of Sherlock Holmes.

“He loved me…?”

The utterance was so low, John’s voice so watery, Mycroft could not certify it as a whisper.

Mycroft did not answer; he did not have to.

“T-t-take… take it… them…” unable to say more, the sketch slipped from John’s hand and fluttered to Mycroft’s, but Mycroft understood.

Mycroft rapidly but neatly collected the art back into the portfolio and zipped it closed. 

“John…?” Mycroft stood, portfolio in hand in an offer he knew the doctor would not accept. John quickly backed away from him, stumbled onto the wall as though he would disintegrate at its touch.

It was just as well; Mycroft could see John was moments from falling apart and only awaited his departure.

With a curt nod he left the room to give him that privacy.

Mycroft was at the top of the landing when he heard the shock of John's knees as they hit the floor. He was halfway down the stairs when he heard the beginning of it. 

The sharp yowl, the broken moan, the horrific wail, all of it loud and utterly relentless.

Mycroft knew he could compartmentalize it. Shove it somewhere deep and so far back it would be almost akin to forgetting it.

But he will not. At least not for the immediate future. He will pay this penance of keeping the memory of this moment at the forefront for Sherlock and for himself, for his own share of blame for it.

Even he had not realized he had stilled on the steps in the pain of it until he felt Mrs. Hudson’s touch brush his hand as she passed him on the landing. John’s screams having brought her out of her own flat. He gave her the same curt nod he had given John and escaped the building at last.

As Mycroft sat in the sedan that took him home, the harrowing sounds that had ripped from John Watson’s throat followed him in his mind.

Though he knew the worst was not over yet for John Watson, not by a long shot, Mycroft knew then that Anthea was right.

This was the ugly cry.


End file.
